Now, Let me tell you all the reasons that this video is better than the actual game that came from it.

1. The main character has some kind of face. He is actually a person that matters in the game.
2. The graphics are kind of simple, but although simplistic they still carry points for having more detailed environments than the actual game.
3. Crushing sound of the guy's fingers sounds like it hurts. In the actual game it is a soft, fwamp, that sounds like kicking a football, not breaking bone.
4. This guy is EVIL. He throws a guy into fire! Not only does that guy break his legs from the fall, but the he burns to death. Furthermore, the guy looks like James Bond! When do I get to kick James Bond's butt in the game? It certainly isn't during the helicopter scene, since he dies anyways (and yells if you shoot him down). This mysterious character also punches a guy into a shark tank. When did the game have an awesome shark tank? I mean, the game had a shark tank level, but there weren't any man eating sharks in it, removing the prestigious badge of "awesome". The enemies in this video take friendlies hostage, or so it looks. In the game they only take enemies hostage. Wow, smart move, take a guy hostage who I as the player was going to kill anyways. Atleast in the video it makes it seem like the player doesn't even care about the friendly, and decides to shoot him anyways.[This picture seems to confirm]
5. Rarely anything good explodes in the game during gameplay. I certainly wish I could have exploded a helicopter by lighting a fuel trail. I could feel like Wolverine from Xmen Origins.
6. The player can absorb a boatload of bullets with his goldeneye power. In game if he took even a second of that fire, he'd be dead.
7. In Air Fragmentation grenade? Where can I sign? Unless he is blowing up a guy with explosives attached. Then kudos. Unless that is a hostage with explosives attached. Then especially evil kudos!
8. Guys have wicked sunglasses.

What sucks about this video which the game got right:

1. Simple graphics and textures are better in game.
2. The main character during the first part facing M has his head jerk weirdly. I believe it was green-screened in. I don't recall it during the actual game cutscene being that way.
3. Better shooting animation, and better shooting sounds.

Anyways check out a screenshot gallery here:http://www.mi6.co.uk/media/gallery/index.php3?subdir=gra_screenshots/&view=gal&offset=1

Notice how a lot of the pictures appear to be in-production photos. This is especially apparent by the shadows and texturing. The texturing is very poor, but the shadows are soft, and resource intensive. This means that the photos were likely taken in an unfinished/ overly expectant rendering engine.

Also, you got to actually fight Oddjob.

Try and find one photo that doesn't look more exciting than the actual game, I dare you. Post a comment with the offending photo.

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by Zott820

Story: Here come the SPOILERS: The gameplay builds heavily on Resident Evil 4. Cut and paste the basic Granados enemies into “Africa”. Remove the scarier Plagas human infestations and replace them with flowers. Yes, I feel that the Majini are less intimidating this time because there aren’t huge parasites coming out of their body and the African culture is muted. The Los Illuminados cult was very unexpected and well executed with the robes and the castle. I expected more reliance on African culture of shaman, voodoo and other racial/cultural heritage to be utilized for the fifth Resident Evil. Yet Capcom has given into the fear of Resident Evil 5 appearing racist by including white Majinni (How many times do I have to see the Mexican looking guy with a mustache and the bald looking white guy?). The tribal village middle of the game attempted to rise to the occasion, but there wasn’t any good sacrifice of people, possession from spirits, or dense jungle fever. Please let me officially raise the bar for future games set in Africa that won’t be afraid of appearing racist:

Resident Evil 5 Racist Alternate Story (Going to be Uploaded Soon)


REAL STORY

Weskar may be able to dodge bullets Matrix style because of increased reaction time due to multiple viruses, but he sure fails at killing a steroidal mini-tank named Chris and a knife wielding “African” British sounding woman named Sheva who specializes in kicking and flipping moves. Weskar’s repeated failure to remove these two people, and its plot device, forces Capcom to come up with a story where Weskar with his epic skills, can’t kill mere mortals. Instead only his passive actions are successful like any good villain would have it (Weskar killing Excella with the Uroboros injection). Is this divine intervention from god ala the action commands? No, it comes down to the elite training of the two agents.

Chris has taken a course in epic action commands learning the famed punching moves from Captain Falcon. Chris PAUNCH with a “Straight” and Chris KIIICK with a “Stomp.” or “Kick” to the enemies face or back. The Straight and Stomp moves have the ability to completely explode a Majini’s face. Chris has made a fundamental flaw in his training that makes his move-set incomplete. He seems to be lacking the crucial “Suplex” that Leon spontaneously learned by entering a castle. Since Chris doesn’t enter a castle, he doesn’t learn how to suplex enemies which is a shame. In exchange, Chris has the combo action command of “Haymaker” and “Neck Breaker” which almost make up for the loss, but not quite. I can’t forget the first time Leon did a suplex with a “Huh” and the enemy’s face exploded. All I was expecting was for Leon to kick the Granado in the face, not pull out epic skills.

Kirk is member of Sheva’s military team who joins forces with the BSAA. He has a great voice, excellent skintone, and reminds me of Louis. All of these are pros in my book. It’s just a shame that he isn’t a playable character for Co-op or for multiplayer. WHY?? I would much rather have Kirk on my team than Sheva. Kirk is a minor character that only serves a purpose of tying Sheva to the black community.

Umbrella is able to live on as Tricell, another “pharmaceutical” company intent on creating biological creatures of mass destruction. So for some reason, there are more Granados with Las Plagas than Uroboros, the black worm like creatures that swarm the hosts. There is some really annoying Brooklyn guy that serves no purpose other than he sells the biological agents to terrorists and has worse development than Sheva in the story department. I don’t even know his name offhand, that’s how poor his development is. His real role is very small and he does nothing because Capcom cares more about co-op this time than story and meaningful action sequences.

Then comes along the first real interesting part of the story where Weskar goes and kills the person who originally breed children with the Weskar name who would be biologically better than other people. The old man’s children all died except for Weskar. Then Weskar somehow realizes that the old man manipulated him and goes to prove that the “right to be a god is now mine”. So Weskar easily kills an old man and decides to take over creating a perfect world of really really strong people while not realizing that this is the old man’s goal still. That’s where the pre-mutant person named Chris shows up with Jill. Both fire wildly at Weskar who decides he can easily move at the speed of light to teleport around the room. Jill gets choked, Chris gets splintered on some wood (haha), and Jill sacrifices herself by throwing herself at Weskar, which takes them together out a window. That last sentence was pretty self explanatory but I liked how I described it. Chris is left with no one in the room and never finds any bodies. Thus since he has played a role in Resident Evil before, he should know that both are still good. No body = alive (Weskar, Jill, Mike the Helicopter Pilot, ect). Dead body = alive (Weskar). Zombie like body = death but can become human again (Leon). Body becomes Uroboros = no cure, basically your soul is dead, your body is alive with the sound of black wormlike music.

Weskar once again manipulates every single person he meets so he can develop biological weapons in missiles. Why not just launch them if Uroboros can’t be stopped? So instead of firing the missles, he decides to load up his one plane, carrying maybe two missiles so he can drop them himself. Chris and Sheva completely forget about all the stockpiled missiles in the bases and decide that two missiles and Weskar are a greater threat than the Majini accidentally stumbling around and activating one with their flowers.

I just want to say that Uroboros is more racist in this game than Africans. I am deeply offended by worms being show in a black color. Pink worms or I boycott the game.

Gameplay: The gameplay remains faithful to Resident Evil 4 but the gameplay is expanded to incorporate co-op. The best new aspect of gameplay is the ability to “help” your partner when grabbed and to be able to do combos with action commands. I assume gentle reader that you are familiar with the basic mechanics of the hit game Resident Evil 4, so there is no need for me to go into generalized stuff about how you have to hold X to run and backward X to turn 180.

The ability to strafe is not a gameplay enhancement as each character’s strafing is too slow to avoid thrown objects or attacks. The C and D play styles are only there to entice FPS players on the 360 to give Resident Evil 5 a try. Those players are going to be frustrated at the stop, aim, shoot mechanic and will HATE not being able to run and gun. This focus on shooting and action is probably why a lot of people think the Resident Evil franchise has departed too much from the Horror genre.

Resident Evil 5 was never created to be a FPS and games like Metal Gear Solid 4 failed in this use of the first person perspective. I shouldn’t have to hold a billion buttons to be in first person in MGS 4 and I shouldn’t have to hold buttons to keep the gun/knife out in RE5 (this was later half fixed in the PC version with the quick knife button). I like the controls on the PS3, but I still feel better using the Gamecube controller (obviously since I played RE4 on Gamecube and didn’t own a PS2). Having to push “B” to help your partner results too often in my character saying “Come on”. Yes, I need to “come on” and help my partner. At least I died less often because my partner was there to save me. This changed my mindset from survival to using Sheva as portable first-aid spray. The mean the computer Sheva will automatically try to heal any small amount of damage with whatever she has.

The controls are responsive to what I want to do. There are only a few problems and they revolve around the inventory menu and me not being able to switch weapons or items fast enough. The designers actually let you reload weapons by moving the ammo onto the weapon in the inventory screen. This is a very handy feature that inadvertently makes the game even easier for me and is essential for keeping the Mercenaries combo going with slower reloading weapons (magnum and shotgun).

MINIBOSSES

I characterize any enemy that has a one hit kill attack or does massive damage as a miniboss. They take a little longer to dispatch because a grenade won’t instantly kill them. An example is the axe wielding dude at the start of the game. This classification extends to the different variations of this enemy.

Here are what I consider to be other minibosses: the bag chainsaw guy, the tribal masked giant, the initially very annoying bug creature, the big mini-gun RE4 guy (this time he is packing heat with a cigar), the humanoid mouth creature with the closed hard shell/fleshy leg (because it is annoying), and the Lickers (Beta). The minibosses are for the most part well executed. I still find the Lickers to be really powerful and a challenge to take down since their tongue attack is very powerful and there is no chance of escape without partner assistance. The chainsaw people are extremely easy for the veteran RE4 players since they are old hat and feel a lot weaker this time. The only difference is that on higher difficulty levels, the chainsaw enemy will get back up after defeated and go into a wild chainsaw swinging motion. This is instantly fatal and you can put the enemy back down permanently with more firepower.

The best part about the minibosses is that most of them have action moves you can do against them to attack, dodge or something in between. It’s a lot of fun to let off an action command, your partner goes in for their action command, and then you can follow up with the powerful move like the haymaker. It is very dynamic and feels intuitive.

Bosses

Let me rank the bosses. The most creative boss award goes to the Weskar and Jill fight. It was refreshing and my first time fighting them was exciting. My mindset was “Oh, I see Weskar dodging all my attacks. Ok, well Jill is able to be hit.” So I unload many rounds into Jill only to see Jill die and Chris yell “JIIILL!” That apparently wasn’t the right way to beat the boss. It was a while before I found out that Weskar can kick open the door and open up the upper level. I will say that surviving the 7 minutes the first time was nerve racking but not in the same level of survival.

Most disappointing boss: This award goes to the El Gigante, the on rails boss fight where the car is not moving. Way to go Capcom! You turned one of the most dynamic boss fights into a stationary shooting gallery. The new boss is no fun. All you do is fire and fire. The action button to dodge his attack is strange because Sheva and Chris duck and El Gigante doesn’t FEEL like he wants to crush the people and the truck. Why do I have to target random Majini at the same time while I am fighting this boss? Oh, it’s because the Majini need to be added to add some “action” into the battle. There are some high expectations when you use the most well known boss from Resident Evil 4 again in this game. A small consolation prize is that the El Gigante is named something else and looks quasi African with a goatee.

The coolest looking boss: the spider boss inside the bio lab. I didn’t know you could feed it grenades the first time I beat it. The in-game description says that Chris and Sheva only fought one type of the spider boss. I would have rather fought this twice than the flying bat boss.

Gameplay FLAWS

When on Veteran, I usually only too damage because I was reloading or missed shooting projectiles out of the air. Professional presents a plight: I like the added difficulty that a single hit puts your character in the critical state. What was done poorly here was when the other player tries to “revive” the “downed” player. On Professional, it is near impossible to health the other character in time with a can of First Aid Spray because by the time your character gets out the car, the other character has already died. So literally, the player falls to the ground while the green spray is still coming out of the can. Yet, if you didn’t have the can of First Aid Spray, then the “revive” button would instantly work and the player would be saved. You better hope you are standing a cm. away from the other player if they get hit and you have a can of First Aid or else you lose on Professional. Optimally, I wish Capcom would fix this stupid gameplay mechanic that inadvertently punishes players for carrying healing items who want the Professional level of difficulty.

Like I mentioned earlier, the new action commands are great forms of gameplay. (I am referring to the punches and kicks and not the reduced number of Quick Time Events in the game) but the Quick Time Events are poorly implemented in this version. The reduced number of these Quick Time Events (QTE) has actually hurt the franchise. Leon showed us how he could do the impossible as long as you got the button presses correct. Need to jump across a bridge, no problem, just press ( A + B ). Want to dodge danger (a pit, a thrown knife, a defeated boss?), just press ( L + R ). Resident Evil 5 thought that randomizing the buttons made it too difficult so the actions are always the same if you die and have to replay the cutscene. This is a gameplay design failure. There are also few QTE during boss battles.

Your partner is really never in any trouble, especially if they are grabbed from behind where the enemy does NO damage. Being grabbed from behind could actually be a great strategy in the Mercenaries mode as the enemies LOVE to grab people from behind. The CPU controlled Sheva is not up to my level of expertise since Capcom didn’t want to make a partner that plays the game for you. Potential deadly enemies are only the ones that are instant death ala the “regenerator cricket bug” as one could call it. I don’t know how many times Zott was owned by the bug creature before we developed a correct strategy to dispatch it. I guess Weskar’s whip arms could be considered instant death but Chris enjoys swimming in magma just like Weskar.

There is no reason why Sheva needs to be flipped across a gap to become helpless with an onslaught of summoned enemies. I mean, there is no one there, and then just for game design, about thirty Majini are spawned. Then you have to assist the other player if they aren’t good enough to handle it on their own. I am good enough to handle it on my own. My partner is just there for support so I can do all the epic gunplay and action commands; they will provide healing support and action combo potential.

There is more use of the “cover” mechanic in this game. It makes more sense in this game since later on there are a lot more projectile enemies. I like and dislike the ability to fire behind cover. I like how it makes sniping really easy with the protection but makes the player TOO powerful with cover. I dislike how the cover controls make it difficult to get off the cover. I would like to be able to get out of cover faster somewhat similar to gears of war where I can just push a button and back on the controller.

Chris and Sheva should have the option of using ammo that fires healing anti-plagas medication at the people. In my mind, this would be some sort of lightbulb or taser system that would activate a bright light inside the target, killing the plagas from the inside with a flash. Then ammo could be limited on a recharge meter before it could be used again. The Majini would then be able to break free of their plaga, sometimes helping Chris distract the enemy, sometimes running away, sometimes hiding, there are many options. There could even be an entire mod where players play the game with only this weapon on a cleansing mission.

There needs to be more infected women in the game. There was one female character enemy in the game and it was only in a small part of the village. Like I mentioned in what I would do with the game, I want more woman shaman, more women showing off their physical power, an actual woman boss, more controversy.

If the game threw in children who were infected, like an diary article alludes that they were, then the game would get so much criticism but it would be more realistic. If the game included infected babies, I don’t think there would be much backlash since Dead Space was able to do it (I got a laugh out of Issac drop kicking the baby aliens). If the designers included pregnant women who were infected, this game would be boycotted internationally and reach a level of infamy that ManHunt 2 and Hot Coffee reached.

Graphics: The first impression is that the graphics are both next gen but lacking the graphical punch that the Resident Evil series usually brings to the table. The best graphics are the Uroboros worms, the bosses, the character models and the final volcano areas. Chris’ character model is excellent with great bump mapping for his huge muscles and decent texture work. Sheva is also pretty good with a solid face texture and well rendered body. For best character model, I would say it is a tie between Weskar, Jill and the tribal miniboss. Weskar’s moonlight jacket is very well designed and looks photorealistic. His glasses and character design are top notch and deserve to be praised. This level of effort on Weskar paid off since he was the main focus of the game. Jill also benefited from a very sexy “Zero Suit Samus” character design. I can’t say no to a girl with a ponytail who isn’t afraid to show off her hot bod in skin tight clothing. The tribal miniboss is the tall huge Majini with the mask who has some really well rendered facemask and sweat streaking his body. He attacks by doing the jumping and sweeping of his melee weapon; he also has a amusing kick attack.

The environments look great but feel much smaller than Resident Evil 4 in a few areas. I would have liked to have some fights in the savannah where my character can walk around. There are some large areas but they are mostly large just from the amount of open air that is above the characters. It’s good that the developers dropped their intense heat and shade gameplay since the shadows in this game are not dark enough to contrast with the HDR. My favorite set-piece in the game is the prison Mercenaries map because the volcano environment and Fire Axe Executer mini-boss look amazing.

I really don’t have many complaints with the graphics. The engine is effective at rendering enough zombies for the single player. At certain points like explosions, there is a little lag below 30 FPS. The cutscenes are all in-game which is always a good step in the right direction.

Sound: The music is a less adrenaline pumping than Resident Evil 4. The music is very environmental so it accomplished its goal of players not paying it any attention. The bat boss music sometimes irritates me because of the jarring sounds. The enemy voices are decent but it comes down to the voice acting of Chris, Sheva, and Weskar to make the game special. Chris always sounds confident and does sound like an emotionless machine even when he is talking about Jill. Sheva seems to have more emotion in her voice. Both have some corny lines. How about Chris: “Now Sheva shoot him! Sheva: I can’t without hitting you! Chris: Then shoot through me!” anyone? Luckily I like cheesy dialogue.

Weskar’s voice actor really enjoys pronouncing each of his lines with precision and excellent timing. I was more excited to hear Weskar’s dialogue than any other character. His over-the-top dialogue about genetics and superiority is well done with cheese.

A majority of the menu and gun sounds are reused from past Resident Evil games including 4. The sound in this game was overall good enough where I don’t have to focus on it.

PC Version: Since this review took a long time to complete due to distractions, the superior PC version came out. I have no reason to buy this version except I want a real challenge of more enemies with the PC version. Capcom seems to want to release this game like 3 more times with different controls, side missions and skins. I’ll probably end up reviewing the re-release version on PC if it comes out. Otherwise, they better have Leon with voice acting if they want me to buy an add-on.

The Bottom Line: I am satisfied with Resident Evil 5 even though it is not as revolutionary as Resident Evil 4. The game would have benefited from a little more story and character development so I can feel connected to a mini hulk and an “African” woman. The first part of the game was decent, the gas facility/terrorist man was not well developed and the final part was excellent sans ridiculous lava plot. The game could have really used more African elements as this game felt like it could have taken place anywhere in the world. Also, the coop was good for single player but split-screen coop should have had a menu option like the demo instead of having to start the game and then selecting “start” on the second controller.

PS3 Reviews Game: My framerate may be a little worse than the 360, but I can render black worms too. I just glad I can render a lot more zombies than the Dead Rising port on Wii but I'm not displaying the large amount of people from the early RE5 E3 videos. Having Capcom hide their Versus mode in a patch and then paying for it is not worth $5.

*Images from Capcom's Resident Evil 5 website. Note they were from development some look better than PS3 version. Also some elements have changed from images.

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by BlueZero

To sum it up simply: BiasedVideoGamerBlog.wikidot.com will transition to BiasedVideoGamerBlog.com.
Content and website design will remain the same!
The old domain will work for a while longer until I know what I am doing :D

The content will stay the same and we will still be on Wikidot servers for a while longer. If you use the old address, it will eventually transfer you to the new one. For now, both will go the same. Again, the content and look of the site is not changing so this really is only a minor announcement.

The BiasedVideoGamerBlog.com address may not work for a while due to configuring DNS services. I've gotten it working and then later received a parked domain page. Once it is stabilized, we will move on from there.

On my favorite side notes related to video games:
I still can't believe I don't have my Resident Evil 5 review up. I'll just have to finish it and maybe forgo pictures for a while. I also eventually want to review Modern Warfare 2, Majesty 2, Batman Arkham Asylum and other games.

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by BlueZero

My review of this game comes almost comes by luck. Why? Well, there was a Direct2Drive promotion not too long ago that sold games for 5 dollars apiece. It just so happened that one of those games was Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Athena. It had been marked down from $40 in the promotion, an eye catcher if any. I had heard positive notions about Butcher Bay on the original Xbox, many praising the graphics, perhaps some of the best on the system. A quick trip to Metacritic showed an average rating of about 90. More convincing was not required. For 5 dollars, if it sucks, then it is no big loss. I have paid more for worse games (especially when $10 is considered bargain-bin prices.)
The deed was done, and I proceeded to install the 7GBs of data needed to play this sucker, which would eventually uncompress to about 10GB. Hefty Hefty Hefty.

This review will only encompass the re-mastered Butcher Bay campaign. I have only finished that campaign, and having never played the original, felt that I should give it its own review. Therefore, I’ll consider the two campaigns as completely separate games, and thus possibly two unique reviews. Everyone who has reviewed this game has seemed to complain about it being remade. Well, I don’t have any bias toward the original, since I never played it, so this should be a fresh perspective.

First off, I beat the game on normal once through, with most graphics settings on high, except at a resolution of 1440x900 and one setting at 8-bit to avoid extra lag for possibly negligible graphical increase.

This review contains SPOILERS.

An unofficial list of changes of this remake from the original can be seen here:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=939612&topic=49738144

Story: You are Riddick, scourge of the universe, or so it seems. To be honest, I haven’t seen the movie that this game ties into. You start off being escorted by Johns, whom is some mercenary with enough guts and skill to capture Riddick somehow. Then, the player has a short tutorial level, which was cleverly implemented, giving the ability to explore some of the game’s tactics early on, while usually throwing them by the wayside for the rest of the game.

(IE: Guns are DNA locked most of the game, yet the tutorial gives them to you no problem). From here you meet Hoxie, the warden of the non-quotidian Butcher Bay Prison. It isn’t made clear in the game, but the prison is multi-layered, with towers and deep subterranean pits. Riddick is initiated into the prison in a Call of Duty 4-esque walking sequence. Perhaps Infinity-Ward was inspired by the original?

Once properly deloused the player has the option to talk to various characters, as well as walk around freely. The game is not open world, but similar to an RPG in that not every quest is a requirement; there are missions that can be completed to grant additional equipment. These periods of rest in the story, without action, reminded me of the puzzle sequences of Half Life 2, as well as the calm ship exploration scenes of Star Trek: Elite Force.

From this moment on, Riddick cranks out authority, and escapes that prison part. He fights some monsters then repeats this structure 2 more times. After that there is an underwhelming final boss(es) to end the game.

This light summary may make it seem as though the story is repetitive but it is only in the fact that you seem to keep escaping and being recaptured. Each time Riddick is recaptured, I was expecting an ending to the game. In fact, each pre-capture feels like a climactic ending yet the game will not end. Instead, each restraint results in Riddick’s transmission to a new sector of the prison; somewhere with new characters, new enemies, and new environments. In this way, while the basic gameplay remains more or less the same, the player now has new venues to explore, joined with a new cast of characters. Though… all the characters whom Riddick help pretty much end up dead. Or he kills them, your choice.

The game is still linear at its heart. Riddick is free to move around in the prison sections often using the ducts as a slipstream to new areas. This includes sometimes circuitous backtracking if Riddick wants to finish optional quests down the line. Overall, the freedom of movement gives the game an open-world feeling, even though it is prison, and largely confined. Riddick cannot move back to zones post-capture(s) (I.E. Riddick cannot go back to the starting Prison level after being sent to the second-tier prison level) but this is not too bad, except the chance of finishing earlier segment missions is then removed at those points.

There was only one multiple-path section in the game that I recognized; happening in the second-tier prison. It was a choice between killing lots of people in a fighting ring, or getting caught with drugs. I chose the pure killing route, and it was straightforward. The drug path choice, as far as I could tell, was more complicated; I was unsure how to even start it. Regardless, it too involved killing though had additional plot elements. Both ultimately resulted in the same solution, but it was nice for the developers to add a sense of choice, and possible replayability.

There are a couple sections of the story that are unexplained. Riddick gets super-darkness seeing eyes about 1/3 of the way through the game. Yet, despite there being a women’s voice, I have no idea why he got these powers. There is also an intro and outro to the game that star Riddick hunting a yeti-like creature with the same women voice-over. I’m not sure why he’s doing that ether. These cinematics don’t play automatically in the remake, which adds to the confusion; they are found in the extra content part of the menu. I think the makes more sense without the random movie sequences, so I can see why they were left out, but on the same note, what is their background? Perhaps the women and the movies relate back to the movie tie-in that I haven’t seen. Either way, the movies and the voice felt out of place or perhaps just a plot device to give Riddick the special “eyeshine”. Consider me uninformed.

Characters: There are a bound of characters in the game, but honestly, few are really important, and these are people that are reoccurring. The game is not afraid to kill off characters, main or not; realistic, raw, and fitting.

Riddick – Man of few words. Virtuosic killer whom likes the darkness. Bio complete.

Johns – Mercenary who keeps getting screwed over when capturing Riddick multiple times.

Jagger Valence – Dude that helps Riddick.

Abbot- High Ranking Guard, antagonist of early segments of the game.

Hoxie – Warden of Bucket Bay. Not really evil, just a shrewd businessman.

Soldier – Dies

Riot Guard – Dies harder. Takes more critical flinching damage from behind.

Pope Joe – Doesn’t die, but doesn’t do much either. “Gives” Riddick Eyeshine.

Monsters – Come in different varieties but act much the same. Xenos, mutants etc. Die; Gib familiarly.

Turrets – Most annoying enemy in the game. Changes from instant kill varieties to major damage type with no visual indication. Very weak health-wise, but if it spots Riddick, it is usually too late. They tend to respawn, making them that much more persistent and horrible.

All other characters are just well voice-acted quest vendors. I will compliment the developers for creating such a wide assortment of characters, not just their personality and dialogue, but also their modeling. It is a compliment when there are not five characters standing around that are cookie-cuts of each other. The soldiers are, but that is because you fight so many of them through the course of the game. Even among soldiers there is usually some distinction on their visible features that set them apart; some wear helmets and hats.

Regarding enemy strength, there is no initial indicator to tell how strong one enemy is to another. For this I must give an example. In one situation, Riddick commandeers a Riot Guard and must plow through the facility. Along the way he meets other, bigger and different-looking Riot Guards. These enemies seem like they would be a suitable match, and yet pumping bullets into them sends them into a twitching frenzy, in which they don’t return fire, and just die. During that same phase, a communication by the guards mentions that they must send in some super robots to stop me. These super-robots only appear at that point in the game and the player has absolutely no idea how strong they are, but just pumping bullets into them seemed to work like it did for regular riot guards.

On foot, Riddick is meat to robots and Riot Guards unless he can sneak behind them to their weak spot or use a heavy weapon such as a chaingun. With this in mind, the later portion of the game throws the player for a loop by introducing big white robots, which while looking stronger than Riot Guards, are taken down easily with one or two shotgun blasts. There are also floaty robots that are even easier; one shot of anything will kill them. When the thought of robots was previously “strong”, it is unclear what hierarchy of power exists. The confusion continues later with bosses, and how seemingly strong they look, yet tactically simple to kill they are.

AI and Gameplay: Just to mention it, each box of health is a portion of the health that is recoverable by waiting. If a box is lost, only a health station can get it back. There are special health stations that give an extra bar of health permanently. These were rare, and the game could be beaten without them, but they do help. Med-stations that run out of their “four squares” of juice can be refilled with health canisters.

Moving through different areas of the game results in a load screen like Half Life 2, but the big difference here, is that the load times for Chronicles of Riddick are whopping fast (Maybe 10 seconds or less). I seriously mean this. This includes the initial load too. Compared to other modern games, I am surprised at the pace. Even Half Life 2 doesn’t load as fast as this game, and it is older with lower requirements. I was very, very impressed by the loading speed. It is annoying to walk back through a load portal and have the game have to reload, but thankfully, I don’t have to waste my life waiting for this game to queue and complete.

The AI in the game is acceptable. It is not a very intelligent AI, but it fits the purpose of the characters it is portraying for the most part. Most usual guards tend to stay far away from Riddick. They will not simply rush up to him (to be bashed to bits) if they have cover. Instead, it was often I who had to come to them. They also didn’t fire and retreat either, a flaw or a clever plan?; forcing me to get shot at as I approached. Let me tell you, the guns do a lot of damage to Riddick. This is more than likely used as a method to keep the game sneaking based, and it works. I often had to rethink attacking strategies to incorporate stealth.

Guards are both facile and execrable at spotting Riddick in the dark. Sometimes I will make a noise and they’ll come rushing to me. Or they will see where I hid and search it. Other times, when I attacked, and then rushed to hide, the guards will change into seek and destroy mode, moving slowly with gun-mounted light on, and making easy targets for Riddick at less than 1 ft away walking by.

Other enemies, like the robots, tended to not have much of an AI at all. They simply stood there and got shot, or shot. Sometimes they changed positions and repeated the behavior. The same simplicity applies to the Xenos and pit dwellers, but their simply programming is Left 4 Dead style pack rushing.

Graphics: Imagine walking into a prison, and instead of being greeted with grit, you found yourself face to face with lots and lots of shiny things. The prison looks anything but sere. That is how this game is. The new game engine definitely added something more to Bucket Bay. I haven’t played the original, but from what I’ve seen from comparison videos, there are definitely items that have more detail attached, such as the health dispensers and character models.

The lighting is also better, giving the shadows and textures a sense of more depth. The darks and shadows are inviting. The only problem is that secularity. While not the bloom that plagued Mirror’s Edge, it might as well be, for it does detract from a couple scenes. The only spots where the secularity is fitting are the near ending portions that revolve around “clean-rooms” in which case the graphics engine makes the rooms feel futuristic and on key. A legally required recreation chamber is an especially outstanding example of the lighting done correctly. (And an offbeat section of the game too) In a prison though, not the best. The flatness of the original game engine might have been better at giving off the dullness of the prison. Overall, certain objects should have kept the shiness, and others not so much. I’m not sure if this unsightly shine was intended, or an oversight by the developers to save time and not have to reformat all the textures with new bump-maps.

The addition of motion blur and field of depth add a lot to the game. Especially giving a more cinematic touch to many of the cutscenes, and a ferocity of Riddick's moves during gameplay. Both are pluses, and they are integrated so well that they don't have any of the annoyance that plagues their use in some games. Bravo.

Special attention was paid to the graphic indicators and HUD. With this I mean effects that relay information to the player. When Riddick is in darkness and well hidden, the hue of the screen will turn bluish. Similarly, when Riddick is using his eyeshine, he is given a slight tunnelvision/fisheye, as well as increased brightness overall. These effects were well integrated, and they were not detrimental to the game I felt.

On that note, the developers seem to have opted for a different way of signaling objects and character names. In the original Butcher Bay, there were HUD elements where descriptive text would hover over an object or person, with a line connecting to that person. In this remake, that has been replaced with a fade in of the same text in the bottom left and right corners of the screen with no connective elements. This works more effectively, as it doesn’t make Riddick seem like a robot wearing an eyepiece. It also enhances the integration into the game world, Riddick knows these objects and so the fading in is almost signal of a recollection of his memories. Unfortunately, it forces looking into the corners of the screen to see who or what is being interacted with, but this is only a problem initially, once you get used to the areas and objects, there is no reason to even think about the text. The health in the top left corner IS important however. The developers made the boxes signifying chunks of health more shaded which make them look nicer and fit better with the rest of the UI.

Color blending is an issue in the dark areas, where bands of color can be made out when they shouldn’t. I can only say that it may be due to the graphics settings I had chosen, the 8-bit lighting with the off occlusion setting, and so cannot lay absolute judgment on this unfortunate outcome until further analysis is done. There is a cool grain effect placed all of the game's visuals. It isn't as prevalent as in L4D thankfully, and I only noticed it through the screenshots. If it played any part, it was subtle. This grain effect is not the color blending problem.

In the later parts of the game when Riddick are controls a Heavy Guard, the rooms become quite destructible. This is really the only section when you can do this. Every other destruction scene of the environment is scripted, especially when the guards throw path-opening grenades. During this particular scene, there isn’t a plethora of things to destroy, mostly pillars and flooring, but it was nice to see that something came apart in the game world. This may have originally been a 2004 game, but a little bit of physics is appreciated, bringing it up slightly to more modern gameplay standards.

Sounds and Music: Sound quality was good. None of the sounds were washed out or overly compressed. It is difficult to describe sounds in particular that stood out, but they were good enough as to not needing mention.
Sadly, the sound seems to de-sync on the cutscenes. It didn’t happen all the time, but occasionally would become noticeably off from the actor’s lips and movement. Now, the lips of the characters are not as good as the ones from Half Life 2 at matching what the character is actually emitting from his orifice, but even then I could tell the sounds were off. Furthermore, taking the many snapshots for this review resulted in de-synced sound. Apparently the engine is not capable of taking a snapshot and keeping the sequences up to date. Disappointing.

Apparently, some of the music was changed in the remake compared to the original release. I can’t tell any in particular, given this being my first time playing Butcher Bay, but some people said that the prison break song and others were changed.

Overall, the music seems very atmospheric in this remake, at least when sneaking. There are a couple up-beat action tracks, especially when the Xenos attack, or when driving some of the mechs around, but generally it is just atmospheric background. I can’t complain, even if there were changes. What did stick out was the use of a “Riddick theme” which popped in and about the songs too often. I could have used a little less of that during my playsession. It may even have been the same song repeating, but whatever the case, I seem to recall noticeable annoyed at the theme being so prevalent. This is bad when the music, not the enemies are causing annoyance.

Voices: Dialogue is of high caliber and quality with the NPC’s characterization correctly played out. Riddick’s ethos is one of strict independence, a man of few words; even when answering people’s questions, which one might think would require more than 3 words, somehow he finds a way.

There are parts of Butcher Bay where Riddick can stop to listen to the characters speaking about events. These are not like Oblivion in which they are random; they happen as you enter the areas for the first time. Still, I liked the option of listening to these optional dialogues, or just interrupting them, never to hear them again. On that note, conversations can be skipped, and it doesn’t skip the whole dialogue tree either, only what the person is saying at that instant. I found this feature useful, as in many games I prefer to read the dialogue through the provided captions than wait 4 times as long for the actor to finish speaking. Also, on subsequent playthroughs, I may not want to hear all the same lines again.

There is some subtle humor written in for some of the NPCs. The Heavy Guard constantly insults the Riddick for being a poor driver. There is Craps, who lets Riddick play dice, along with some interesting professional/unprofessional terminology of the mini-game. Running around and beeping all the doorbells in another section rewards completely frivolous dialogue to please oneself. I liked all these diversions; my accolades to the developers to put some humor in an otherwise serious game.

Controls: Good and bad. What makes the controls iffy is the feeling that they are not as precise as they could be. There are moves that should be pulled off, and they are not. Blows that should hit in hand to hand combat, and are deflected. An enemy attacks you by raising back for a blow. There is supposed to be a moment in which you can counter the move, or do a finishing blow. This feature works accurately when countering guns, but if you are fighting a foe with a switchblade or club, it hardly, if ever, works. Is it supposed to? I think it should.

Attacks are dependent on the movement of Riddick when a button is mashed; moving forward while attacking yields a different offensive strike than if moving left and attacking. While these were supposed to play a strategic role in hand to hand combat, I found it hard to accomplish to any real degree of skill, and was just random button mashing with the hopes of a hit. To win any of the hand to hand showdowns, it was timing, gap between characters, and weapons that mattered most.

I know I am beating this game with its controls, but I must continue to crush them. Mouse look was also slightly odd the first time the game was played by me. The freelook had an almost limited degree of motion, something that I’d grown accustomed in very old games like Marathon. By this, I mean the degrees of look are not all possible positions, but are limited to certain angles of movement. This only appeared when moving short spans of look and did not detract from overall gameplay as one got used to it, but initially it felt offbeat. Could this have been something ported from the consoles? If it is something real, and not just part of my imagination/ gaming setup, why put it in?

So many bad controls can only means one thing…. Console port. Well, the developers included a weapon wheel, but unlike Crysis; no you can’t change weapons with the middle button effectively, and no you can’t go through all of them with the number keys. Thus you must hold down X, and either pin a weapon to the two available assignable slots (1, and 2 only), or just use the clunkier than Crysis selection menu. I’m not sure why I can’t use the number keys to change weapons, the weapons all occupy specific spots anyways and there is no customizable inventory, so they can’t be rearranged. You won’t be changing weapons often in this game, but why such a stupid limitation? The number keys were there for a reason, and especially in this day and age the scroll wheel should be perfected in quick weapon switching and killing. Arg!

I will compliment the vehicle scenes. Both felt clunky and heavy as they were supposed to. The Riot Guard scene didn’t change too much for the controls, but the Heavy Guard added noticeable delay and mass, which I felt were comfortable integrated with the style of the beasts.

There is actually a decent amount of user interactivity in the world. Riddick can open lockers, flush toilets, Flip beds, turn off lights, ring doorbells, pick up weapons, talk to people, poison food, use health machines, open vents and more. A lot of these actions are required by the game to proceed, but a couple, such as the toilets and lights, are merely methods to get players more involved in the gamespace. Granted, there are no PhysX or Havok physics at work here, so objects stay stationary for the most part, and the barren prison is just that, barren; but I appreciate the extra “optional” interactivity the developers put in. As something fun and strategically important, bodies can be dragged into the shadows to avoid alerting the guards. I frankly didn’t find it all that useful. I appreciate its inclusion for the true Splinter Cell players and for throwing bodies into flesh hungry blades, and off cliffs. I only wish that like Arkham Asylum there might have been some atmospheric debris floating around…

Navigation: When Riddick is jumping, he can sometimes catch onto objects. The problem is, the objects that are grabble are not clearly defined. This isn’t like Mirror’s Edge where you can climb anything. This is like Mirror’s Edge where you want to climb a ledge and find you don’t seem to stick. Riddick tries to jump again, and again, but it turns out you aren’t even supposed to get on that box. Sigh* Also, Riddick likes to lose his grip when getting shot while climbing up. I know it is more realistic, but from a gameplay standpoint, it meant enemies on platforms above could neither be shot, nor reached as they camped the spot. This happened rarely, but was still annoying, especially towards the end of the game, when the monstrous Xenos attack.

As I mentioned, the prison is navigateable through ducts and Riddick can visit most of the facility that he is stationed in freely. To help guide the player through the many pathways and labyrinths there is a map. This map is useless. I couldn’t even tell where I was on it, and even worse, the map just shows room names on generic squares. Instead the proper way to get around is just by learning the environment. Luckily, there are useful guiding signs to help maintain sanity. Some lunatic had been kind of nice to paint/etch the names of areas the ducts are leading with an arrow pointing the way towards those stations. I usually stumbled across the correct path to get to my destinations, but for those wishing to explore more, this writing in the duct is very useful. It also prevents the player from backtracking down the same duct by accident, which due to the similarity of textures and lighting, happened on occasion.

Weapons: In this game, weapons are a mixed bag. There are some criteria for weapons that must first be brought up. There are melee weapons, and there are shooting weapons. Every shooting weapon can be used as a melee weapon though, as well as a flashlight. With that note, let me go over some weapons.

Shotgun- Best weapon in the game. Use it in close range for instant-kills, use it at longer range to suppress till you have gotten within close range, repeat.

Rifle- Inaccurate. Use as a last measure, or if out of shotgun bullets. Frankly, it is almost better to snipe with the shotgun than use the rifle. The rifle is good if the target is close for dealing a lot of damage quickly, but then, that is what shotgun is for. Later down the line you can find an enhanced prototype rifle, I have no idea what was enhanced about it besides the shape.

Gun- It is a generic “gun” in the game, but is really a pistol. It isn’t prevalent, but can be better than the rifle, though weaker.

Gatling Gun - Strong, fast and seems to have unlimited ammo. Sucks at close range though, since it takes a while to spin up, ALA the Team Fortress 2 Heavy.

Shiv- Ranging from screwdrivers to scalpels to various shapes of metal, they all perform the same.

Clubs – Pretty much the same as a Shiv, though has a different attack pattern, so I’ll count it different. Not sure how much better it is, though usually costs more than a shiv.

Knuckleduster/hand-to-hand – This weapon attaches to your knuckle and possibly adds more damage, it is difficult to tell. It is not removable once equipped, unless switching it for a different looking one. Surprisingly, the guards do not care if you wear this around them, especially during the Tower 17 parts. I guess this is attributed to the fact you cannot remove the item, and killing anyone is that part will have you die anyways.

Stun gun- Shocks people, unlimited ammo. The victim will recover after a while, but can be stomped for an instant death. As good as the shotgun, except it takes a long time to recover per shot. Useless against robots and Riot Guards.

As can be observed, there is not a wide selection of weapons. The melee attack of the guns seems weaker than using the shiv or clubs, and so is not recommended. Unfortunately, due to the controls, easily switching weapons in case of ammo depletion is not possible; something to keep in mind.

Finishers are awesome. They make your effort to kill a person have that extra surprise at the end. There are no gun finishers, though the shivs, club, and hand to hand do have some. These finishers are usually gruesome [Shiv in the eye anyone?] and happen automatically if the target gets below a certain health. There appears to be enough frontal finishers that I rarely saw many repeat.

However, for stealth finishers, I found that the same animations occurred too often for my taste. It was either a crepitating neckbreak; for hand-to-hand, a stab in the head; for shiv, or a strangling/bashing; for the club. For a game based a lot on stealth, I think there should have been a couple more of these stealth finishers. The shiv is also slightly strange for its stealth finisher. The stab in the head works no matter what gear they are wearing. It is awkward to see Riddick smack a piece of metal through a soldier’s metal helmet; guess Riddick is super strong.

The game doesn’t go overboard with the guns, thanks to those RPG-esque missions sequences as well as limiting their use. Guns are locked down the majority of the game with DNA, forcing Riddick to use what is presented to him. Through the second half of the game this includes the Stun Gun, which is amazingly effective at killing. The stun gun is limited by the reload time, so a couple areas of great guard density force its holstering for sneaking. This helps keep the balance between pure power and stealth in the game.

Extras: For collecting cigarette packages the player is given extra art. The art is good, but doesn’t feel worth it to collect the cigarette packages for it alone. Also, the art is not so high quality that players can zoom in, like Soul Caliber 2 allows. I suppose disk-space might have been an issue for that. To make up for the averageness, each pack had some pseudo-witty quotes on them, and are interestingly named. That is the real draw; at least it was for me. Also 100% completionism with achievements, but I am not one of those people. The commentary that was in the original director’s cut is removed which is a serious disappointment. I can only suppose the game is so big already that perhaps it wasn’t cost effective to include it on the “DVD” too.

There is money in the game. It is used to buy items, pay off guards or enter bets. It is only useful for the second portion of the game, while in second-tier security. After that, the use of money seemingly disappears, and also stops showing up around the level. No problem gameplay-wise, just something noticeable if the player pays attention.

Conclusion: For $5, I definitely cannot complain. Even at full price I’d say the game is worth getting if you have never played it before. Butcher Bay is good on its own, even if I find that Dark Athena sucks, this portion is worth the price of admission. Graphics were above average though wet and shiny. Sound was quite good. Music is repetitious. Characters and voices were stellar for being unique, even better than Oblivion’s. Enemies do their job, but misleading strengths. Mech scenes are fun. It is refreshing to find games that have RPG elements, but they aren’t forced down the player’s throat, and give a chance for the player to relax in an FPS. Cigarettes and concept art are a nice treat. Confusing story if not in the know. Characters die in gruesomely effective and spectacular ways. HUD and graphical effects are useful without going overboard. Missing extras from previous versions of the game disappointing. Desyncing cutscenes is very sad. Appreciate a game that gets loading done correctly. Getting around the mines is somewhat of a confusing mess, but horrible map, but there are some helpful pointers around.

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by Zott820

Note: One of our faithful readers sent this review in to us. Appreciating biased videogame opinion, we post it here for your pleasure.

By ZenOnion

I found the other day, a game that made me smile when I thought back on the hours I spent playing it— NHL Hitz 20-03 by Midway Home Entertainment. As a Mom of biased gamers, I was challenged by my sons to learn this game. Since they had many years of practice, they were the experts, I was the beginner and to play together was crazy. If you do not have access to experienced gamers who can show you the controls and offer advice it is a good idea to complete all lessons at the Hockey School and then go on to one of the 6 Mini Games to learn how to handle the controls. This I did since the boys decided to keep some controls secret just to mess with me. Much laughing and snickering occurred around me as I provided hour of entertainment for them. This was evident during the many hours I spent in The Hockey School as I learned how to handle the controls and make a fool of myself. I enjoyed the various mini-games and became a better player because of these elements. I found out that expert gamers get very competitive and creative during these mini-games so be for warned. The entertainment value alone in what strange things can occur between players showing off and trying to win is both time stealing and at times indescribable. Many tricks were learned by me by just sitting back and watching. The most enjoyable mini-games to play for us were in this order:

1. Shootout You as Goalie need to protect your goal or you as the shooter try to score. One on one action.
2. Three in a Row Tic-Tac-Toe via stick to puck. The secret to win is to block the shot.
3. King of the Rink Check or sweep players to gain the most points. A player knocked out of the rink earns extra points.
4. Shooting Gallery Shoot the most windows out of a building while on rooftop across the way. Try getting them all in a row, diagonally, or make a design.
5. Own the Ice Grab the puck and skate over 5 areas of the ice trying to change them to your color while your opponent steals the puck trying to do the same.
6. Keep Away Gain points for highest time of puck possession and most successful passes to your team mate.

Now to an actual hockey game—to begin with we would all yell out our preference for the various special themed ice arenas such as “let it snow in the disco arena”. We had customized the Viking team into our franchise team by adding players to match our personalities and physical characteristics. We made a player named Mr. Big who was gigantic— as big and tall as we could make him and who was announced on the ice as “Slim”. There was our favorite female player the “Black Knight” and our high scorer “Mark” followed closely by “Zeus”. I was of course named Mom, but was announced on the ice as “Mummy”. We had the most fun and challenges when we had a total of 4 players competing against each other. A player could change his position on the ice depending on the action or player he wanted to be (forward, goalie, etc). Since I was a beginner to start with I usually locked myself into one position so when I got lost I could scan the rink to find out where I had skated off to by looking for my number on the ice rink. Also by locking in my position I didn’t mess up the game so to speak by getting in the way of the action. As I became a better player I was able to not lock in and could change my playing position as needed. The intent of winning as many games as possible and performing certain tasks or goals was to unlock certain rewards which could be used in future games. It was strange to see elk and other strange characters as players as rewards. You could also earn equipment and experience points to boost your player’s attributes which was our goal. The ultimate challenge for the expert gamers in our house was to see if their Goalie could skate all the way down the ice to the opponent’s goal with the puck and score a point while leaving his goal unattended. The other players did their best to steal the puck.

Lately other games have gotten my attention and the gamers are not around like they use to be. Once in a great while when we have the time, we get the game out and find Hitz 20-03 was always fun to play and still is.

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by Zott820

Moving alone is the OC remix named Malevolent Mansion by remixer: Audix, Nekofrog. The pace of the song is much faster than what one would expect from a halloween song. The electric tone and beat add to the original.

The would also like to embed the Mad Monster Mansion Theme OC but embedding is disabled on this song. Thus, check out this Banjo Kazooie OC Remix. This remix takes a huge departure from the original by really slowing down the tempo, adding a little woman vocal background sound, and by making each chord have more emphasis.

Kingdom Hearts Nightmare Before Christmas Music

I'm not impressed with the way that Kingdom Hearts did the Nightmare Before Christmas music. They should have made it vocalized and not made it background music.

I only watched my roommate play the game a few years ago. It's pretty bad that I like the Disney characters more than I like the Final Fantasy characters. At least they had most of the original voice actors doing the Disney characters!

NOW WE ARE TALKING! Here is a pretty epic battle between Jack and Oogie Boogie. Mmm, original voice actor for Oogie Boogie singing a variation of the original Oogie Boogie song. I really enjoyed watching this video and I just discovered it after I made the post. I really don't understand how Jack does damage with music but it fits nevertheless.

In conclusion, this Halloween post is a little too short for what I wanted to do but hey, it's Halloween and we all have things to do. My new favorite song is the variation of the Oogie Boogie song. I'll be looking more into this later.

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by BlueZero

Perfect Dark on the N64 set a new standard for first person shooters when it came out. Rare needs to release good games so they decide they can remake the game for Xbox 360's Live Arcade. The visuals look slightly upgraded and I hope the porting team does a good job of replicating the revolutionary, but now outdated gameplay to the 360. Continue reading to look at the new screenshots the developers have released to increase my personal hype.

Here is a little background prior to the pics. It seems that 4J Studios is handling the port. They promise online and offline multiplayer with 1080p and 60FPS. Straight off the bat, I challenge that the 360 can render a true 1080p image. The game will probably be upscaled from 720p knowing the development trends on 360. If the studio can pull off a true 1080p video, which should be possible since this is ancient technology and a computer can render the base game as high as possible. I have to be skeptical because I don't want a poor port of one of my favorite games.

Right-click and view the picture for excellent quality. Images have been formatted to fit our 800 width blog

I'll start with my personal favorite screenshot. Observe the very nice looking face of the DataDyne guard woman. She actually looks like she is wearing earrings and I'm digging her white pants. The textures of the city and the desk look excellent for the source material.

Next, look at the next gen Carrington Villa. Perfect Dark sure is not rendering any next gen shadows when you look outside the windows. This requires some soft shadows! The lighting in this screenshot is also poorly done in comparison to the other screens. I would expect there to be more light flare on the roof next to the light source rather than far away. I'm probably nit-picking too much but this is a screenshot the marketing team released and I have the right to judge their game. The edges of the objects in the room are good; they are smooth enough to remind me that real objects are not jagged.

Moving on to what appears to be the outside of start of the first Area 51 mission, I am again hit with the poor shadows. Why can't they be more diffuse so they aren't as sharp and I don't see lines. There should be a new shadow/darkness engine created to give more contrast. Since this is one of the newer screenshots, I doubt the programmers will spend the time to fix the shadows.
Another thing with the picture is how horrible the ground texture meshes with the wall textures. It looks like they didn't even try to make it match. I can't even tell if the ground is supposed to be snow, it looks more like mashed potatoes.

Now here are some exciting alien screenshots. 4J Studios and/or Rare are taking some chances by upgrading the character textures. Some like Elvis look excellent with the eyes looking like alien eyes should. The Skedar texture is decent and is what I would expect from an upgrade.

Take a look at that FarSight! Now that's a bold style for what is the cheapest weapon ever created. I actually like the new design and I hope the developers slow down the "autoseeking" secondary fire for competitive multiplayer.

The game featured an incredible single player campaign with high production values and visuals. You know that thing called Co-op play that Gears made "popular"? Yeah, Perfect Dark accomplished this back on the N64 with splitscreen 2 player cooperative or counter-operative. Man it was sweet to control enemy characters in the counter-operative mode. My friends had no idea how evil I could be to thwart Joanna's objectives.

The splitscreen screenshot shows off decent textures and nice lighting. What are still being denied the face of the next gen Joanna. Hopefully the developers increased the audio quality so the characters don't sound like they are recorded through an ancient microphone.


In conclusion, based off the screenshots, it appears the game has taken an excellent step forward with the new character textures. In contrast, the shadow engine needs to be revamped so it is not directly porting the light cells of the N64 generation. The shadows in the screenshots confuse me because the DataDyne and the interior base shots look great. Then I am smashed against a tide of shadows arbitrarily ending with solid lines. Please add soft shadows to the game or allow a special next next gen lighting option for true dynamic lighting.

I would buy the game if I had a 360. Unfortunately, I can't justify a purchase of more than $100 to play a classic I could play on my 64 or elsewhere. So the port gets my praise, and my money if I can access a 360.

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by BlueZero

For reference, Bobby Kotick is some high ranking Activision guy. AKA the CEO.

The reason for the PC backlash is that we as a elitist crowd are legion and are able to get our way. Some PC gamers have been denied being right in life and the Internet and video games are the only places where they have some power. You tell these people that they can't run their own server and thus can't be superior, you tell these people to boycott and flame your game.

Another part of the anger is that FourZeroTwo basically had to play the role of Marketing PR by saying that this matchmaking only system is better and an evolution for PC gaming. Hmm, taking away an option is never a step in the right direction. Moreover, this setup is bad if IW ever took down their servers (unlikely when compared with similar systems like BattleNet and Steam). I personally want to see mods on the PC platform and dedicated servers are always better than a few servers.

I understand that Infinity Ward is making this move to combat piracy on the PC. They saw the high number of people playing without a cd key on servers and they want to get a piece of that pie. The catalyst was Activision, a company that has been reducing the range of PC Internet gameplay with their no LAN for Starcraft II. Thus, I hope that gamers are able to cope with less for their money. With MW2's price of $59.99 on PC, an increase of $10, PC gamers better make their money do the talking.

Here is a video of the now famous Hitler scenes for any huge paradigm shift in the gaming world.

So anyway, this recent announcement which I first read on Kotaku a few days doesn't change my standpoint about the game. I am still getting the PS3 version because I feel I can dominate the players where on PC I will get possibly destroyed. Maybe nowadays with my new Core i7 and gaming mouse, I can compete, but I don't want to pay $60 for a PC game. For PS3, still a day one purchase. For PC, I would wait a couple months for the price drop. For 360, I hope you enjoy paying $50 a year to play the same game online. Oh, what's that? You are correct, this is my bias! If you are a Wii gamer, enjoy a badly made port of Call of Duty 4, which I doubt few people haven't played this Game of the Year.

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by BlueZero

I like the detail Infinity Ward put into the game. There are actual dead bodies in the mall scene instead of the usual empty mall. This means that the terrorists may be striking at random throughout the United States. Most likely the mall is still in Washington DC.

One of the people in the trailer looks like the USMC guy who was near the warpig Warpig. I think his name is Ssgt. Griggs and he had the awesome deep voice. In this trailer he shows up around 1:18. At least I think it is him. Also, my money is that at 1:03 that the guy in the boat to the right is our favorite character with the amazing mustache. Yes, that means that Price is back! There is no way that man could remain critically injured or even die. His mustache gives him the Perk Juggernaut in my mind.

There are more sections where the player is on rails. This new trailer shows that the main character can drive with one hand and fire with the other. This mechanic was shown in one of the earlier trailers when the guy was on a snowmobile.

The graphics in the first 15 seconds of the trailer are incredible. The soldier is very well rendered with many details. I hope that the engine really does pump out the color and the details throughout the rest of the game. This trailer had a lot less color than the first trailer. This is worrisome.

I hope that the Washington DC mission has you rescuing the President from a hostage situation. Why else would the soldiers be trying to get into the White House. Another possibility is that the terrorists have control of the giant RED BUTTON AKA US nuclear defense/offense systems. Either way, we know for a fact that DC is pretty much no longer a tourist destination unless people like looking at a warzone. It would be impressive if there were multiple endings based on your actions but I doubt they would include it.

Overall, the DC landscape is very well detailed. I'm still getting the game when it comes out on PS3. Yes, I used the trailer with the 360 logo. The 360 version is going to sell the best anyway. I'll be owning people with the easiest multiplayer community, the so-so PS3 competitive FPS players.

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by BlueZero

Let us proceed further and perhaps you’ll understand what I mean.

Outpost 1 (PC/Mac): In this game you build up a base on a new Earth. There is just one issue, getting there. Well, you know what, we are a high tech species, we know where planets, galaxies, and somewhat “ha-bi-ta-ble” planets are . To this end, you are granted the wise wisdom to select your galaxy in which to inhabit. You can launch probes and stuff to help make your decision, and heck, you can even let the AI recommend stuff. But, real men make decisions, not computers. So off you go to Wolf 359. I know you chose it because it is mentioned in Star Trek a couple times. So you go, and arrive. And you find there are not planets here except a burning hot sun. All you are given is a quit button. Let us assume you committed suicide in your spaceship.

Kings Quest 5 (PC): You are a happy little king, gallivanting around the countryside, impressing the women and slightly homosexual shopkeepers. Just then you spy a shop for pies! YES! You go in and quickly buy one, eat it, and feel absolutely great. Later you see a rat getting chased by a cat. “Yeah cat, kill that rat!”. And so it does, and it carries the rat off in its mouth. You feel good about yourself. Then you wander around aimlessly forever. The game is now unbeatable. Wait, wait, hold on, lets reload from an earlier save game. So we save the rat, and proceed farther into the game. Okay good so far, and OMG Yeti! You click through your entire inventory only to find that none of your items work. The Yeti makes short work of you. If only you had a …pie to throw in his face.

Goldeneye (PC):

What is so horrible about this game? The same thing wrong with Perfect Dark. There is something quite nefarious about these two games that most people think is fine. So you are playing through a mission, everything is going fine, and then you have to plant a bug on something. Simple enough. You select it, you press Z to fire it like you would your gun, and it arcs, and misses what you needed to land it on… uhhh. At this point the game says you failed the mission. You failed 007. You F.A.I.L.E.D. Why can’t you go pick it up again, and then just stick it on? What do you think this is, every other spawned weapon in the game? No, no no, Bond doesn’t repeat errors, and he certainly doesn’t make them. Go back to the start of the mission little man, you have failed big time. It doesn’t help that shooting the bugs when properly placed also ends the mission. A straw bullet from a lunatic could skim it and game over. Who goes on a top secret mission and doesn’t bring a replacement bug? Everybody knows that the evil doer is going to find it and crush it between his fingers anyway. It is good to bring more than one. Joanna Dark isn’t any more experienced in the manner. She also lobs these things. You’d think in the future they might make a gun for this, since hey, what if you need to aim at something way up high? Making it go in a mostly linear curve might help.

The developers rub the failure in your face. Not only does it flash mission failed on your screen (For Perfect Dark only), it lets you go about finishing the mission. Yes, you can kill many people and do the rest of your duties, but with that single mark on your scorecard, you are not longer elite, and will fail regardless of your actions from that time on. Good Job.

Kings Quest II (PC): This game has the same issues has KQIV does, but in a different manner, it is less losing the item you need further down the line and more you used the wrong object dummy. This forum post words one scenario up nicely.

“you're walking along looking for some hot nookie and you encounter a snake, this particular snake is one of the "Bite you and you die instantly" types and amazingly enough at this point in the game you happen to have a sword and you used to be a knight! So what is the pratical {sic} application of the sword? To kill the snake! Great now your pathway is clear, oh did we mention the game is unwinnable now? That's right you violent fool! The REAL man's way to deal with a snake is to throw a magical bridle on it so it because a beautiful flying horse. YOU THROW A BRIDLE ON A SNAKE SO IT BECOMES A FLYING HORSE and the game never ever ever ever EVER hints that this would be a logical thing to do!”

http://forum.progressquest.com/viewtopic.php?p=206955&sid=a74de2c993b54fb51f52909c820fd7e7

And there you have it. I shall include another for prosperities sake. There is a bridge in the game that you must cross to reach a door, that will ultimately, when enough keys are collected, grant entrance to the final areas of the game. The bridge gives points when crossed. Thus like any smart gamer, you’d want maximum points, and so would cross the game as many times as you could leech out of it. So after a certain amount of times you go trip trapping over the bridge, it collapses, taking you with it. This is all good and fine, except the game doesn’t tell you about this fault. So, you are granted one free pass to cross the bridge and inspect the door. If you cross any more times without any key, maybe just to inspect the landscape for clues, you have ruined the game. Now, even if you go and collect the keys, you may have run out of “stomps” if you will, and won’t be able to unlock that door without dying. Nice one…

This link talks about these situations a little more: http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/rants/reviews/video_games/kings-quest-ii.html

Myth: The Fallen Lords (PC/Mac): You thought that unforgiving games are limited to ingame did you? No, the really cruel ones are those that get you outside of it. The original versions of this game had a dark secret. Let us say you get tired of the game (hard to believe, I know) and wish to reclaim some of that hard drive space for something else. Well, you installed it in the C: directory so you could get to it easily. Nice, nice. Well, if you uninstall it, you will have your hard drive erased. How’s that for a nice surprise? Worry not, the newer versions have fixed that error, but it is still a quaint reminder of how unforgiveable that situation is to the discoverer.

Epilogue: Thankfully, this problem of making games very unforgiving as been changed in recent years (though the Goldeneye, and Outpost examples aren’t so much bad as “unique”) as many developers try and polish their product to vive for the gamer audience’s wallet. Many of the problems that caused these unwinnable situations have also be alleviated with more linear gameplay (boo) [Ala Uncharted or Half Life 2] or mission based structure where losing only fails that mission. [GTA]

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by Zott820

Leon sure knows how to be epic. Lasers are no problem for him. I remember this room for the sheer awesomeness of Leon's moves. He is able to air dodge the lasers with precision. The only way to top this performance would be if Leon took out his knife and sliced through the lasers. I didn't realize that the chair is a homage to Castlevania. This would have been more apparent if Leon wondered "what is a man doing resting here?"

Now it's time for a suplex done right! Who would have thought this would have been possible?

Ashley attended one hour of the Secret Service Elite Course while Leon took an entire week to get up to speed for his trip to Spain. Ashley can now defend herself with some hands on "overtime".

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by BlueZero

Best Method of Flight: Pterodactyl. Not only is it a dinosaur but it is fast and sleek so you can summon it in tight corridors. Incidentally…

Best Trick: Shrink Magic. Drop this little sucker on something (like vehicles and mounts) and bang! They turn smaller. This can be pretty game-breaking since it will allow you to navigate really tight areas (designed to prevent vehicular flight) with the greatest of ease.

Best Goon: Longcat. I'm not joking and I'm not picking Longcat just because it's a meme. He is the best thug because he is invulnerable to almost everything except Nukes (which reset the stage anyway) and bottomless pits. His attacks are kind of slow though, so if you're in a rush, write up a Giant Enemy Crab. They also answer to Massive Damage. Or if you are working in close quarters, use a Blob.

Best Attack: Blackhole is a fairly obvious choice, though you run the risk of getting sucked into it yourself. "Everything" and "Nothing" produce the same effect. Use with extreme caution.

Best Building: Shelter. It will shield you from a few attacks, and apparently there's some kind of glitch that will allow you to bypass certain barriers.

Best Vehicle: Mech gets my vote, more for awesomeness than practicality.

In fact, let's set practicality aside for a moment and discuss some of the zaney reactions between different sorts of NPCs. Atheists will cower before God in terror and Elephants will flee from mice. Ninjas and Pirates will fight to the death. Communists will destroy money and attack Capitalists who flee in terror. Punks will mug and beat up Emos (though apparently they do that to everybody). God kills bad people, except in one mission where he sends bad people to heaven.

While writing this article, I was exploring the game's robust fantasy offerings and decided to create a dwarf, an elf, a wizard, a ranger and a halfling. Prompted by my fiance, I dropped a ring in their midst, and my makeshift fellowship proceeded to beat the living bejeezus out of each other. Impractical? Yes. Entertaining? Absolutely. Even without multiplayer, Scribblenauts has serious party game potential.

Post a reply if you find anything really special, like how to build that penguin piloted bathtub helicopter depicted in the manual.

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by Sarcasmancer

With the upcoming release of Tropico 3, I felt inspired to go back to the original, and play it. Here, I will lay down my thoughts for you. But first, let me say that the Mucho Macho edition which I have includes the Paradise expansion pack built in. I am unsure how many features were in the original, and which have been added, so I shall just review this complete version and eliminate a two part-er. [Whew…]

Tropico for PC is a Caribbean island simulator, sort-of, it almost crosses the line into overly realistic. You are a dictator whom is cooped up in his palace, and runs the island with an iron first, mostly. At heart, despite trying to be a dictator, you are more often than not a pawn of the people, as I shall go into in more detail.

I’ll start off by going through the modes, and you’ll get a feeling of how the game plays from that.

Build Mode: Here you lay down buildings. The interface is slightly unintuitive. For example, some buildings have an arrow next to them that lets you rotate them. Yet, I’m not sure why this doesn’t appear on all buildings. Are some square and so the turning is negligible? I’m not sure. Even if this were the case, I should still be able to change the facing of the building for my own personal satisfaction. Nothing requires being set next to a road, but I would still like to perhaps makes things face a road for atmospheric reasons.

The elusive arrow has another function; on some buildings, such as farms and mines, it will switch which type of product will be produced from your placed structure. Thus you don’t have to go and change it once it is built, though you can. You cannot rotate these buildings since the arrow occupies the same space where the rotation would be. The developers could have Ameliorated this with two different graphics for the different functions, or at least moved them around. They should also let me rotate buildings with type selectors as well.

Once a building is placed, you have to wait for some construction crew to come by and build it. This can take a VERY long time. The reason for this is that the crew do not like building things far away from them. Thus you’ll have to build a couple of construction crews throughout your city. They will build closest objects first unless you change the priority of the buildings, thus you will want to place one in the center of your city’s extensions. Thankfully the developers included this option otherwise some buildings would never BE built. It is changed by clicking on buildings under construction and choosing one of 4 priority settings. Also, I believe walking tires them, so when they do reach your far out building, they may only work for a little while before heading home.

It gets slightly more troublesome when constructing the building is a pain too. The workers must first remove the trees, which isn’t too bad. Then they must level the ground. This is where the real pain is. If your island is anything but flat, buildings could take forever, especially large ones. For example, the airport, the biggest in game structure, could take practically the whole game to be built, just because the workers spend so much time leveling the terrain. A pure nuisance, despite being quasi-realistic. The developers took it too far with that one. (Thankfully, it seems to be mostly cleared up in Tropico 3, as far as I could tell in the demo)

Finally, after all that is complete, the building can finally be constructed as its yellow building hue becomes fuller and the building pops into place complete. Construction in this game is very crucial; everything revolves around it, and yet is hindered by inclement mechanics. Thankfully the rest of the game is more pulled together.

Ways to make money: Now that you know how to build things, you need to know how to make money, and feed your people. This is done by building structures, which are occupied by workers, and ultimately ship a product. Besides building placement, you don’t have to worry too much about most of the steps in the industry.

Farming - Farming in Tropico has several levels of realism to it. Clouds fly overhead, and change the fertility of the soul. They rain and help the crops. Thus, you must place your farms where they are going to be growing in correct conditions. Luckily when placing a farm, and any resource gathering building, the ground changes to shades of green and red to show where the most suitable places for that building are… at that time. Corn is the easiest to grow of the foods, and usually most of your island is cultivated with this resource. However, it doesn’t make the most money. The rest of the crops are more profitable, yet have more specific growing conditions. One thing I must mention is that you don’t want to place the farms ON the green parts of the map when choosing the fertile land. This is misleading, but your crops are grown on that green, so the workers will plant it there, and they can’t do it if you have just placed a farm on it. It took me forever till I realize this. (I tend to ignore tutorials). Finally, your crops go through a cycle of growing, filtering and harvesting, which have different animations, and are satisfying to watch. Out of all the things included, it seems that farming was a place where assiduity was placed. Kudos. I must mention one thing I did not like about farming. You must grow food to feed your people, yet, you cannot control which food goes to your people, and which goes to your exports. Thus, you might be planting papayas and bananas to export, and your people are eating your expensive produce. Arrgg. A little clicker button for Export only would have been nice, especially when so much else was done.

Mining, Logging, Fishing – Easy resource gathering economies. Just place the building, and the workers take care of themselves. Mines should go near the places where the resources exist. Logging camps should be placed near trees, and fishing near the shortest distance towards the best fishing hole. Fish can be fed to your population, but once again, you cannot control export/local feeding. Trees cut down by the logging camp are renewable to an extent though are sparser than the original tree placement. What is cool is that each tree that has fallen has multiple sections that are cut out. So one tree is not just one log, many of the tree cutters can come by and collect sections of the fallen tree; another welcome attention to detail on the part of the developers.

Ranching – I wanted to mention this one separate from the 3 above. Granted, it is like the others, you just place it down and they take care of themselves, but more micro-details make me fill with glee. I love these micro-simulations because they remind me of the old Maxis games; but enough reminiscing. Ranching is cool because you have a choice of cows or goats. The cows and goats can have children, which will eventually grow up to build up your Bovinian empire. You start each ranch with about 2 cows, and from there they multiply out. The best part of the simulator is the fact the cows and goats terra-form the terrain in real time. You can watch them eat the green landscaping as it transforms to barren brown. It is quite fascinating, and at the same time puts a maximum on the amount of cows you can have. They work to find the green, but eventually they will eat your island bare if there are too many. I guess it is almost representative of the world at large now, but perhaps I’m thinking too far into it.

Industry - All the things listed above are basic money makers. You can dramatically increase your profit margins if you take the raw resources and transform them into things. That is what canneries, cigar factories, and jewelry makers are built for. Granted, it takes more people, and for some reason these structures require workers with high school educations (It beats me why. You have guys cutting down trees but they can’t make a chair out of it? ) At this point, the money made from these structures usually puts the player out of needing money the rest of the game, assuming you don’t spend like a madman or get hit with a hurricane.

Tourism – I’m not sure if this existed before the expansion or not. If it did, the expansion heavily increased the available options for it. Basically, you have to build special structures, like hotels and resort sites. I never fully grasped the intricacies of making money through it, and with the much easier methods of farming/ranching available; I didn’t see much need, unless the mission required it. However, there are a lot of options for hotels and entertainment. Unfortunately, the local populous tend to ignore these places themselves, so in vanilla games they tend to be widely useless. It would have been nice if once again there was a button to make the tourist place a pure local entertainment building. Why can’t my farmers play mingolf?!

The expansion adds new tourist types, which I’m not sure affect much except they have new sprites, sounds and varying types of money. Always good to have more people types just to break up the monotony.
Those are pretty much the major ways of making money. Other ways exist, such as in the output of the entertainment venues you place, and newspaper coupons but they are usually not enough to keep your island growing productively. You can make money though US/CCCP stimulus, but the same idea applies.

The People/Factions: Each person has a set of motives which they follow. These include things, such as food and rest, the two basic needs of Tropicans, as well as entertainment, health, and religion. These contribute to overall happiness. There are more, such as liberty, housing quality, environment, crime that also contribute. Overall, a lot to keep track of. And this is why I tend to juggle them poorly.

Not only that, but each person may be part of a special faction, such as the militants, communists, environmentalists etc. These people feel more strongly about those motives and so if you are failing in those categories, it carries more weight on their overall happiness.

In this way you have to build your infrastructure so that buildings that satisfy the needs are not too far from each other. Therefore, you might have to build a church, a clinic, marketplace and housing right by each other so that the people can satisfy all their wants. This makes for a lot of duplicate structures being needed at the end of the day.
But wait, there is more. People also want good pay relative to other people. But of course you can’t have everyone making the max amount of money or else the relativeness is null. Furthermore, people want jobs that fit their education. Thus you need to make buildings that satisfy the jobs. Luckily, churches and clinics need high school and college educated people respectively, so you’ll always have those to fill as you need to have many to serve the masses anyway.

People also have stats, such as intelligence, courage and leadership. Education level decides what jobs are available for that person to occupy. There is also a “skills” group which shows how skilled the selected person is at each job. They don’t even have to be human; more skilled goats find greener grass better than unskilled goats. The higher the skill, the faster and better they do their job. More educated people learn things faster. More courageous and leading people will rise up against your government more readily if you do poorly.

Besides the information that is vital, there are a couple ever sections that show up per person. You can see a list of “thoughts” which tell you what the character is going to do/joke comments. You can also see the nearby family of the person, (No Sims Family Tree though), age, as well as their birthplace.

All and all, there are a lot of micro-simulations going on for each person of the island. When there are 200 or more people, it can be quite a headache to keep them all happy. And let me tell you, I usually am unable too.

The Almanac: Luckily, there is this tool that helps generalize, and categorize the people of otherwise equivocal needs on your tropical paradise. It also lets you see how close you are to reaching your overall objective for the mission or the score for free-play. You can look at detailed statistics of your population, arranging them in to graphical overlays of education, or sorting them by political faction.

While detailed there are still wants to be had. This is no Excel, nor is it a Google Stock chart. You can watch charts that show popularity over time, and click on and off different factors such as housing’s affect on it, but these things are mostly useless for me. It would have been nice if I could scale the chart freely to see my lifetime happiness as it progressed over time in relation to the other factors, then move it to just the current month, not limited to a set time range. Furthermore, when sorting my population by say, intellectuals, I would have much preferred the game to count the people for me, instead of showing me graphical representations of the people lined up under titles. At least give me the percentage of people in each title per the entire population. These things would help me more accurate gauge the population on certain ideas. Same goes for unemployed/paycheck. At least you can click on the graphically represented people to see who they are in game. This is probably not very useful if there are 100s in the category, but proves the depth that some players could go into running their empire.

Some parts of the almanac are genuinely useful, but getting there is somewhat of a forest maze. For example, to get to export prices, you have to go through 2-3 submenus, the same goes for finding out who is the leader of each faction and what they think about you. I didn’t even know factions had an actual leader that you could see in game until this week! I’m not sure how to fix that without adding more clutter to the overall almanac menu, but I’m sure it could be better integrated.

Despite these hiccups in GUI accessibility, the almanac is very sophisticated and complete. You can find charts of happiness, threats to power, numbers of citizens, where their allegiances lie, how much they are eating, expenses, what kind they were, the economy of the island, how much I am making in each sector, how much rent is costing/making, tourism ratings and profits, and relations to the foreign powers etc. There is A LOT to look over. You could get very deep into the numbers and analysis of your island with everything they have included for you to look over. I’m sure it is useful to some power users, but I find that I ignore the almanac except for looking for specific problems and my player score. Still, I am impressed with how many variables the developers let you look up.

It is hard for me to find anything seriously wrong with the almanac besides the clutter of options available. But, I will add some cavaliers; with so many things already put in why not add in the ability to see where people are living on a mass scale, as well as let me see where they are working. This might make it easier to do a mass firing. Also, it would be cool if I could find out how many strong leaders exist among my population to easily combat. Furthermore good developers, let me bribe and use my militaristic power on the almanac menu, for example, if I wanted to eliminate all the farmers in a mass genocide, I could do it. (There is an option under the Info mode to show the respect of each faction if I wanted to pick them out, but then I’d have to move around to select each one, why not put them all in one place?)

Alright, now that all that is covered we can actually start with the reviewing part.

This game is very complicated as it has many many MANY variables disguised under simplistic graphics. To me, this game has more things to look out for than Sim City. Pretty much the only thing that Tropico doesn’t have to manage that Sim City does is Traffic, though even then, you have to manage layout and distance rather than cars on freeways.

Graphics: Tropico is 3D and 2D. Ships are 3D with poor textures and some sort of single pong lighting. Birds are the same, though you can’t tell since they are small and don’t suffer from the lighting grossness that plaques the ships. The terrain is also 3D, as shown when the constructions workers elevate and terra-form it. Everything else is 2D, including the clouds that hover above the ground.

This is fine as I’d rather have the charming colorful people be high quality 2D sprites, which they are, than the flat ugly 3D models they tried to stick in. I guess it would also be taxing for 200+ 3D models to be roaming around in 2001 when graphics cards weren’t as advanced as they are now. (Heck, there are settings for the quality of the 2D sprites, so that you wouldn’t run out of RAM playing this game. On max settings Tropico uses a whopping 60 Megs for sprites! The whole game was using about 75 Megs at one time. Kind of makes me crinch when Firefox uses 300+ Megs)

The sprites are beautiful, as the walking and acting animations are clean, and each character has their respective job looks. This is cool because ala TF2, you can tell what class someone is/where they work, without having to think twice about it. The characters do twitch as they change directions, but it isn’t noticeable on the fastest setting, which I usually play on anyways.

You can rotate and zoom the camera, though it is not free-flowing. This is fine for the most part, except it has the problem that most isometric games game, some things get blocked. The partial remedy is the “B” key, which makes buildings transparent, but that just makes them look like they could be under construction, minus the yellow hue. Still, it is better than nothing. I still find that to be slightly a problem on densely placed structures.

The game also includes all the tiny micro-simulation details which I mentioned above, such as the farming and grass. Workers stack up their products at their place of business outside, and so you can visibly detect which ones have output to be shipped. They are not a generic package either. Logging camps have logs that stack up, while the ranches output meat “things”. This style reminds me of another game, Stronghold, which uses the same mechanic to show food stores, and an efficient method it is.

There are a couple more problems besides the ugly 3D boat however. Hardware mode for me did not work at all. Whenever I did, I had a skewed screen display with graphical fuzzies all over. I was forced to switch back to software to make it playable. Furthermore, while I like that the resolution can go to up 1600 x 1200 or (possibly) more, I couldn’t get the game to switch to it. I guess my max resolution of 1680 x1050 is just too little under it, and the game doesn’t want to scale it. This is not too much of a big deal though, the game looks good at the 1080x 1024, though is stretched to fit my widescreen monitor. (This is not visible in the pictures here)

One last nitpick on the graphics are a couple of the characters, notable the dockworker have some sort of unclean walking transition where the shadow of the foot seems to stay in one spot till the animation repeats. Hard to explain, but noticeable on the closest zoom. In no way a game-breaker though.

Story: There are mini-campaign missions which have stories, but there is no one main story. Each campaign mission has a different goal, but they are usually similar to as follows: Attract X number of tourists, Build X building, gather X number of Y.

You can program your own missions with external tools, which are available elsewhere on the web. However, there is a built in editor for simple things like adding more workers, or changing the landscape of the island. It was nice for the developers to include this “unsupported” feature. [Hold Ctrl and type editor to access]

Though not a story per-say, the game does have a losing condition that is the same across every mission. Every 5-10 years there is an election. If you lose, you lose the game. Let me tell you, it is not always easy to win these things. In fact, despite the option to rig the election, you can still lose, though from slightly other methods. Choosing to ignore the election often leads to the same results.

If the citizens on the island find the election unfair, and you won, they have the tendency to jump onto the rebel side and try and take down your regime. Not only that, your own military tends to be quick to follow if not happy. So pretty much it is game over if you don’t have enough respect among your own men and decide to cancel or rig the election.
Overall, I found the elections to be quite frustrating. It was hardly ever the actual mission conditions I was failing, it was usually just the elections. I found myself having to cheat past the elections, to try and reach endgame. Quite sad. With the vast plain of variables mentioned before, it is difficult to get a majority, and harder to please everyone.

You can also apparently lose if a foreign power takes over your island, though this has not once occurred to me.

The missions included though are quite fun, and although there is a limitation to the variations of winning conditions which aren’t just different values of other missions, PopTop kept the game flowing with interesting and witty writing, and some missions specific choices which could have any number of outcomes..

Controls: As I mentioned in the almanac, the GUI is both robust, and slightly a pain. Besides merely building things as a dictator, you can also do much more. You have the ability to set wages per each job, and per building as well as the price of admission for that building. I loved the inclusion of this feature, but at the same time, having to choose specific values for each building seemed like an accountant’s dream and a nightmare for players. You can change them based on education level, but I rarely did. Thus, I left most buildings on their default wages and prices. I found messing with them caused more problems with the economy than it is worth and I’m not Timothy Geirner. (Random namedrop, whoot).

In the same ballpark as the wages, you can edit some mini options about how each building is run. Despite the different names for the different jobs, it basically comes down to a couple repeated settings: Running the business for more lucre/maintenance cost for better overall satisfaction, working the workers for less time, changing the output/purpose of the business, and lastly keeping certain people out. I’m sure if I was doing a segregated town the keeping the “undesirables” out might be useful, but I usually don’t. As for increased maintenance costs for less population/increased satisfaction; later on when money is nearly a nonissue, you can pump these settings up just for the heck of it.

As El Presidente, you must do the best for your people, or what you want. Edicts are your imaginary grip on the land. Building and setting wages are but one sense of control, edicts let you actually get some foreign policy magic working. Under this panel you can have people eliminated, always fun if you don’t care about winning, have people fettered, extend relations to the US or Russia, and enable a number of policies that help/hurt your relations with various factions. Overall, I don’t have any criticism of the edicts present, nor are there any that I felt needed to be added. I will say though that some of the prerequisites to use some of the policies are a pain to reach, but not all are truly required to win a mission.

You can also control game speed. I have the same problem with this game that I do with Roller Coaster Tycoon and The Sims 3, the fastest speed is just not speedy enough (and in the case of Roller Coaster Tycoon, there is only one speed…). This means many of the longer missions are drawn out. Plus, you don’t have to do super micro-management like the game does of its own people, so you can usually just let it sit on the fastest setting till you have money to build something. Then you have to wait again, which is why faster speeds are needed. Also, the game pauses whenever you get a news brief. I would have liked to either turn an option on that keeps the background going when I get these, or a at least have a 5 minute limit before it automatically closes. This way, I can leave the game on and do other things, and still have my people slaving away. I might get voted out of office, but that’s what autosave is for.

Sounds and Music: If I had to choose one thing about this game that truly made it remarkable, it would be the music. Every time I hear the main menu theme, it makes me just want to jump back into the game, regardless of how much I sucked at it, or why I stopped playing. The music washes away all doubts, and I’m back again. I suppose my last Video Game Menu Music is one reason this review/strategy article is being written.

The music is hard for me to explain, it just feels like it belongs. Apparently the expansion added more music to the game, but it continues to fit so well that I hardly noticed an extreme variation in style. Out of all the songs, I love the main menu one the best, but there is also an upbeat rumba song that plays every now and then, and it makes El Presidente feel like he’s doing a good job.

Clicking on each character results in them saying a few saying, nothing super impressive, and it isn’t different for the different jobs, which is a little disappointing, but overall, the character voices were unimportant. Tourists from the expansion pack are unique in that there appears to be various foreign language selection voices, IE Some German, French, and English accented ones. These are definitely a step up from the original game voices but not much more than that.

Plenty of bird sounds inhabit the island, as well of the sloshing of waves. They fit naturally, so they are not noticeable until you find them audible when you ALT-TABed out of the game. Glad they are in there. The best sounds are the ones that you don’t notice; it is because they fit so well.

But, above all is the narrator. This, like the music, will draw me back by just making obscure references to it. It has something to do with the delivery and psydo-cuban accent more than anything. This is akin to the narrator of Majesty, whom is memorable for these reasons in his own right. Hearing Tropico’s tropican Hierophant plead to me about how my people are bored staring at grass brings some mild joy during my people’s hardships. Unfortunately, while I do love the adviser and his voice, I wish the developers had perhaps added a couple more variations, or at least changed up the beginning word. When I hear “Presidente” being said to me, followed by “your people” for maybe 3 of the different things I need to watch out for by audible notifications, I have to wait for the whole phrase to be suttered before I can get any feedback. It isn’t instant, even when playing for a while. “Do my people need health care or food? Tell me already!”

It also would have been rewarding to hear the narrator read out the campaign text in his memorable voice, yet the text stays silent. I can understand how it isn’t possible for user scenarios, but put them in for the ones included with the game, pleeeease? Awwww.

Conclusion: This conclusion will largely ignore what I have written and just try and put an overall view of the game. Tropico is a game for people who like economics, and who would love to have a subtle, and not so subtle hand in the way an island of technology-deprived people can live. You can set wages, you can change the living conditions, you can educate your population, or not. You can specialize in a couple different money markers, with some very cool micro-simulations going on in the background if you want to watch them. The almanac included to help run your people is a blessing, and also somewhat of a GUI mess. There is too much to manage, and at the same time, you aren’t really directly managing any of it. Music is wonderful and catchy, as well as the narrator’s voice. With so much included, it is a disappointment that some things were slightly overlooked/left out. If you love watching charts then look at no other game. Sim City pales in comparison to some of the things you can manage here. 2D graphics are pleasant with minor issues, 3D graphics are just ugly. Some technical problems. Building just takes too darn long on the fastest setting, and without the ability to move the game faster than its current fastest, it is slightly annoying. (And no, I don’t want to build 10+ Construction buildings). Voting is both suitable for the game, but a large pain overall, and detracts from the campaign missions, better suited for free play. Witty humor is always a plus.

Even if you don’t like to control everything, I still recommend this game. I can’t remember why I originally got this game, but all I know is that it is fun to play. The game can now be found on the cheap, sometimes maybe less than 10 dollars. He music alone is worth that, so why not get the game and have a vacation down south?

Glitch: Just because I’m cool, I’ll let you in one a glitch I discovered. First of all, the furniture factory was in the expansion, so you may not have it in your game. I haven’t tested it with any other building, but let us continue with it anyways. Hold the furniture factory out like you are going to build it, but don’t place it down. Wait till some construction people come by, and they will try and build it. The building will proceed to get LESS filled in, and when it finishes will be a pile of rubble on the ground. Apparently my game crashed right after, so I’m going to blame that on this glitch. I held the building next to something else I was waiting to be built, and I did not have enough money to build the furniture factory, so it was red. I couldn’t get to it be repeated, though, it happened to me, so it could happen to you if you were trying for it.

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by Zott820

I remember seeing this guy from Kotaku or Joystiq's best cosplay of PAX 2009. I was amazed at the details of the minigun (not pictured in the video) as it was a spot on recreation of the one from the game. Sasha being stolen by the spy is such great humor. This guy really knows how to portray the Heavy and has spent a lot of time practicing and creating the perfect costume. I think the only way to counter the epicness of this Heavy is to link to other awesome Team Fortress 2 videos. Thus, I will only include one here since there are soo many funny videos:

"May I borrow your earpiece? This is Scout, rainbows make me cry! [Over]". When I had first heard this sound file, I cracked up. I just found this video and it goes so well for a spy dominating a scout. A spy shouldn't be able to kill a Scout, Spy or a Pyro, it's just dishonorable for people playing those classes.

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by BlueZero

I wasn't expecting the graphics to once again be more Starcraft themed than what I remember seeing with the first videos of green grass and cartoon graphics. The early gameplay videos reminded me of Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft and I am not a fan of those games artistic direction. This video is restoring my faith that StarCraft 2 will have a unique graphical look that is a good throwback to the first StarCraft.

The voice syncing for the portraits is excellent in this game. The characters' mouths are only moving when they are speaking. It's like we have technology from 10 years into the future. I liked the Terran's computer voice. She has a more British voice this time and that is always considered to be an upgrade.

You are hearing it here first, but expect to pay $60 dollars for StarCraft 2. Activision wants to make a lot of money from this game and they know that South Korea alone will buy millions of copies. It doesn't take a marketing or economic genius to determine that by setting the price at $60 for a PC game, that the demand for the game won't be highly impacted. Thus expect to part with $60. Moreover, expect to see a StarCraft Collectors version probably retailing at $100. I could see Blizzard including the Marine action figure into that version along with a few more goodies like an artbook and developer diary. Once the three games come out, expect to see an even larger collectors edition probably priced at $150 for all three games. In short, there is going to be a lot of money made when StarCraft 2 is released.

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by BlueZero

September 18th, 2009 is going to be my favorite day of September. Majesty 2 and Batman Arkham Asylum both are coming out on that day. I'm not sure what I am going to do because I NEED both games and will buy both games as soon as I can. It's going to be a tough decision for which game I should play first. Let me start off by explaining why I am very hyped for these games. It's been such a long time since I was excited for any game, much less a PC game.

Majesty 2 is a day one purchase just from the fact Paradox Interactive has secured the old narrator, kept the old humor, and seems to be remaining faithful to the original gameplay. I didn't know the game was actually coming out this month until I saw an advertisement when I booted up Steam. Thank you Steam, I'll just be picking up the physical disk. Also, since I already have Majesty and its expansion pack, I don't need the digital pre-order bonus.

Frankly, I am picking up this game without reading any reviews. My decision is based on Paradox Interactive being a reliable studio, my love of the Majesty franchise and the inclusion of the old narrator. I hope the multiplayer this time doesn't drag on forever with healers being overpowered and a huge bounty on the enemy castle not being enough to end the match.

Batman Arkham Asylum has been out on consoles for about a month and I have restrained from playing the slightly inferior, PhysX-less version even though the game is very well received on consoles. The graphics and presentation of the game are top-notch. I've watched about 3 hours of gameplay when my friend was playing the PS3 version. I might start the game on the PS3 so I can play the Joker Challenge rooms and get the Home space, but I will primarily be playing the game on my new PC.

The inclusion of the real voice of Batman, Kevin Conroy and my favorite Joker, Mark Hamill means it will be an audio treat. I love Batman the Animated Series and have enjoyed the more adult oriented dialogue from the early parts of this game. The fact that it is on the Unreal Engine on PC means that the mod support for this game is going to be amazing. I expect to see full mods of other superheroes using this game engine. I'm very excited about mods and the modding community will provide much more support than challenge room additions.

At the end of the day, I will buy both games. Majesty 2 being similar to the original Majesty making me want to buy the sequel. Batman Arkham Asylum has been hyped as one of the best superhero video game adaptions ever created. At least I can afford buying both these games as there hasn't been any games I have bought recently. Red Faction Guerrilla comes out on PC on the 15th of September, but I am going to probably get around to playing later.

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by BlueZero

Now enjoy the Xbox Live Arcade port which removes the references to Nintendo, improves the graphics and also slightly changes so elements of the game. Notice how barren the first part of the video is without the N64 logo walking across the screen.

The easiest way to see the differences between the versions is by watching the GameTrailer's comparison video which someone has uploaded to YouTube. Wikidot currently doesn't support GT video embedding so I am glad someone else has posted the video on YouTube.

The real treat of this post is the rendition of the theme in Mario Paint. It is recreated very faithfully and also retains the catchy factor.

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts Remix of the BK Theme

I do not own a 360 but if I did, I would be playing this game just for the music alone. The trailers for Nuts and Bolts featured a remix of the Banjo Kazooie theme. The new theme is good, but I would have liked an electronic banjo and some sort of super kazoo. As you listen to the song, you can ignore the strange variations after the minute mark.

Amazing Banjo Kazooie Fan Dubbing

Now that you are very tired of this theme, there is one more video that I must post. It is a fan dub of the first cutscene where Tooty is stolen by Grunty. This person who does the voices is really talented and is what we call in video game dubbing as a perfect fit. Do be aware that the audio is not the best as it gets a little too high and scratchy but that's probably caused by the microphone the guy used.

Banjo Kazooie is a game that managed to outplatform Nintendo's own Mario when it first came out on the N64. What set Rare's game apart is that Banjo and Kazooie utilizes the N64's capabilities and had some great dialogue, humor and music. As seen above, Rare liked to make very memorable opening scenes to their N64 games. Who can forget the Donkey Kong 64 rap?

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by BlueZero

While making it I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep it all allied, or do both the axis and the allied equally shown. By this I meant, who would be the main enemy. Ultimately I kept it focused on the Allies, since more cutscnenes with action clips revolved around them. If the video refers to "you" take it to mean either party, either by addressable of the enemy, or of fellow troops. Makes more sense as a watcher if you take it that way.

The music is from Starship Troopers 3:Marauder, and is named as in the title. "It's a Good Day to Die"

Hope you enjoy it.

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by Zott820

Some of the main gameplay tweaks that I am glad that DICE has address is namely what they call "runway grieving". This is where one guy doesn't make it inside the jet and decides to stand in front of it so the pilot will team kill him. Hopefully now if the teammate is killed on the runway by a jet, it won't allow the person to punish.

Another huge update is that players can pass by claymores if they are going prone. This will be very important for the capturing the control points as they are usually well defended with claymores, especially on Karkand.

An update that I will have to now be aware when I play the game again is that going prone temporary reduces accuracy. I will admit that in the past, I was a person who would do dolphin diving with the cheap level 3 Medic weapon of the G36 E. If the triple burst hit a person, they were instantly dead. Deadly accuracy on the gun allow for sniping and being a medic class allowed for healing so dolphin diving was a viable strategy. I have moved toward move of a crouch dolphin diving style in the past to counter the now slow moving character stance switches.

A final note of patch I will address is that the developers are once again bumping up the power of AA to strike a small amount of fear into the veteran jet players. I doubt this will change the game enough as the jet masters are already able to sniper infantry across the map with the machine gun and drop tons of bombs all over the map while avoiding all kinds of hostile file.

• Battlefield 2 1.5 Patch

As soon as I can get the patch downloaded and find my 5 CDs copy of BF2 (yes I got it when it first came out), I'll be testing out my old favorite shooter.

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by BlueZero

Starting with the beginning of the trailer, I observed that they brought back the old voice for the renegade forces. At the 20 second mark, it can be seen that one guy got 4 kills from an airstrike or missle. It must be very easy to get since there is a lot of explosions going on in the map.

The game is also giving out a lot of points for kills. When the person gets the four kill streak, they get 100 points and also have the perk of using an Airdrop. The five kill streak is a Predator Missile. The player doesn't use it because they need the trailer to be dynamic and stopping to aim a airstrike/missle isn't action packed. 50 points for picking up a flag and a base of 50 points for a kill put the point system into perspective. It appears a player gets 20 points for an assist kill. 250 points for capping the flag seems low for the 100 points he got for the 4 kill streak.

As for new weapons, I like that they have included a newer rocket launcher which can be seen on the left side of the HUD which details the kills. It seems to have a lot of splash damage as the main player was hit near the top of the stairs and it seemed to hit near the bottom. Many of the new names of the guns can be seen by pausing the trailer when the main player steps over a dead body. At 1:06 for example, there is some gun named the TAR-21 FMJ. The main character appears to have C4 and maybe a mine which can be seen in the lower right of the HUD. People are using riot shields at the start and end of the trailer. These people don't die in the trailer so maybe Infinity Ward is signaling that they will over overpowered like in Counter Strike.

The player is using a MP5K when he switches at the 49 second mark. This gun seems overpowered and the MP5 was overpowered in Call of Duty 4 for being available at the lower ranks. The new gun seems really powerful. The lack of a melee kill in the trailer was disappointing because I wanted to see the new animations.

The end of the trailer once again shows off FourZeroTwo. He is using an aimbot to get so many sniper kills. The knife icon in the lower screen shows that the knife must be a special weapon like C4. I like the UAV icon in the corner as well. The biggest shocker at the end is that Infinity Ward has created a true host migration to cover the "Host has ended the game" annoyance from CoD 4. The main player sneaks up behind the sniper and perfectly lines up the throwing knife. Enter the BUZZKILL!, which is where you stop the enemy short of a killstreak. 175 points is a lot of poinst for a kill and this Bullseye achievement. I'm going to be getting a lot of Bullseye kills if the knife is a decent weapon. Also, the knife is gone after being used so it looks like it is a one time use item unless you can pick it up again, which I hope you can. Throwing knives are the staples of great games like GoldenEye and Perfect Dark.

In case you haven't noticed, Modern Warfare 2 is an instant buy for me on PS3. I could get it on PC, but I know that there will be too much competition and cheating like there was in Call of Duty 4. Plus the PC version costing $60 is a ripoff since Activision just wants more money. Regardless, there seems to be enough new content here that the multiplayer can outshine Infinity Ward's last game of the year.

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by BlueZero